Jewish political movements refer to the organized efforts ofJews to build their ownpolitical parties or otherwise represent their interest in politics outside theJewish community. From the time of thesiege of Jerusalem by the Romans to the foundation ofIsrael, the Jewish people had no sovereign territory and were largely denied equal rights in the lands in which they lived. Thus, until theemancipation of the Jews in the 19th century, almost all Jewish political struggles were internal, and dealt primarily with either religious issues or local community concerns. (SeeJudaism and politics.)[citation needed]
Since Jews were excluded as outsiders throughout Europe, they were mostly shut out of politics or any sort of participation in the wider political and social sphere of the nations in which they were involved until the Enlightenment, and its Jewish counterpart,Haskalah, made popular movements possible. As long as the Jews lived insegregated communities, and as long as all avenues of social intercourse with theirgentile neighbors were closed to them, therabbi was the most influential member of the Jewish community. In addition to being a religious scholar and clergy, a rabbi also acted as a civiljudge in all cases in which both parties were Jews. Rabbis sometimes had other important administrative powers, together with the community elders. The rabbinate was the highest aim of many Jewish boys, and the study of theTorah (first five books of the Bible) and theTalmud was the means of obtaining that coveted position, or one of many other important communal distinctions. Haskalah followers advocated "coming out of theghetto", not just physically but also mentally and spiritually. The example ofMoses Mendelssohn (1729–1786), aPrussian Jew and grandfather of the composerFelix Mendelssohn, served to lead this movement. Mendelssohn's extraordinary success as a popular philosopher andman of letters revealed hitherto unsuspected possibilities of integration and acceptance of Jews among non-Jews.
The changes caused by the Haskalah movement coincided with rising revolutionary movements throughout Europe. Despite these movements, only France, Britain, and the Netherlands had granted the Jews in their countries equal rights with gentiles after theFrench Revolution in 1796. Elsewhere in Europe, especially where Jews were most concentrated in Central and Eastern Europe, Jews were not granted equal rights. It was in the revolutionary atmosphere of the mid-19th century that the first true Jewish political movements would take place.[citation needed]
During the early stages ofJewish emancipation movements, Jews were simply part of the general effort to achieve freedom and rights that drove popular uprisings like theRevolutions of 1848. Jewish statesmen and intellectuals likeHeinrich Heine,Johann Jacoby,Gabriel Riesser,Berr Isaac Berr, andLionel Nathan Rothschild were active with the general movement towards liberty and political freedom.[citation needed]
Still, in the face of persistentantisemitic incidents like theDamascus Blood Libel of 1840, and the failure of many states to emancipate the Jews, Jewish organizations started to form in order to push for the emancipation and protection of Jews. TheBoard of Deputies of British Jews underMoses Montefiore, theCentral Consistory of Paris, and theAlliance Israelite Universelle founded byAdolphe Crémieux, all began working to assure the freedom of the Jews throughout the middle of the 19th century.[citation needed]
Frustration with the slow pace of Jewish acceptance into European society, and a revolutionaryutopianism, led to a growing interest in proto-socialist andcommunist movements, especially as early socialist leaders, likeSaint-Simon, preached the emancipation of the Jews.Moses Hess played a role in introducingKarl Marx (who was descended from a long line of rabbis) andFriedrich Engels tohistorical materialism. The JewishFerdinand Lassalle, founded the first actual workers' party in Germany, theGeneral German Workers' Association (which ultimately merged with other parties to become theSocial Democratic Party of Germany) and made Jewish emancipation one of his goals.[citation needed]
The more intellectual socialist movements of the Jews in Western Europe never gathered steam as emancipation took hold. In Eastern Europe and Russia, however, theBund – theGeneral Jewish Labor Union – founded in 1897, became a key force in organizing Jews, and, at least initially, the major opponent of another Jewish political movement of the time,Zionism. There were other Jewish socialist parties in Russia, like the (territorialist)Zionist Socialist Workers Party and theJewish Socialist Workers Party, which united their destinies in 1917 as theUnited Jewish Socialist Workers Party. Another left-wing Russian Jewish party was theJewish Social Democratic Labour Party (Poalei Zion).[citation needed]
The aim of Zionism was to set up a secular state in the vicinity of the BiblicalLand of Israel. Zionism, or the idea of a restored national homeland and common identity for the Jews, had already started to take shape by the mid-19th century, with Jewish thinkers such asMoses Hess whose 1862 workRome and Jerusalem; The Last National Question argued for the Jews to settle inPalestine as a means of settling thenational question. Hess proposed a socialist state in which the Jews would becomeagrarianised through a process of "redemption of the soil" which would transform the Jewish community into a "true" nation, in that Jews would occupy the productive layers of society rather than being an intermediary non-productive merchant class, which is how he perceived Jews in Europe. Hess, along with later thinkers such asNahum Syrkin andBer Borochov, is considered a founder ofSocialist Zionism andLabour Zionism and one of the intellectual forebears of thekibbutz movement. Others like Rabbi Zvi Kalischer viewed a return to the Jewish homeland as the fulfillment of biblical prophecy through natural means.[citation needed]
As the 19th century wore on, the persecution of the Jews in Eastern Europe where emancipation had not occurred to the extent it did in Western Europe (or at all) increased. Starting with the state-sponsored massiveanti-Jewishpogroms following the assassination ofTsar Alexander II, through the bloody pogroms of 1903 to 1906 who left thousands of Jews dead and many more wounded, continuing with theDreyfus Affair inFrance in 1894, Jews were profoundly shocked to see the continuing extent ofantisemitism from Russia to France, a country which they thought of as the home of enlightenment and liberty.[1]
In reaction to the first,Judah Leib Pinsker published the pamphletAuto-Emancipation on January 1, 1882. The pamphlet became influential for thePolitical Zionism movement. The movement was to achieve momentum under the leadership of an Austrian-Jewish journalist,Theodor Herzl, who published his pamphletDer Judenstaat ("The Jewish State") in 1896. Prior to the Dreyfus Affair, Herzl had been an assimilationist, but after seeing how France treated its loyal Jewish subjects, he proposed building a separate Jewish state. In 1897 Herzl organized theFirst Zionist Congress inBasel,Switzerland, which founded theWorld Zionist Organization (WZO) and elected Herzl as its first president. After the state's establishment Zionism, in its various forms, would become the largest Jewish political movement, although more Jews would participate in the national politics of the countries in which they resided.[citation needed]
In the aftermath of the 1905pogroms in Russia, the historianSimon Dubnow founded theFolkspartei (Yiddishe Folkspartay) which had some intellectual audience in Russia, then, in independentPoland andLithuania in the 1920–1930s where it was represented as well in the Parliaments (Sejm,Seimas) as in numerous municipal councils (incl.Warsaw) till in the late 1930s. The party did not survive the Shoah, the Holocaust.[citation needed]
The territorialists, who had split from the Zionists after the Seventh Zionist Congress in 1905, called for creation of a sufficiently large and compact Jewish territory (or territories), not necessarily in theLand of Israel and not necessarily fully autonomous. Some territorialist leaders, such asNachman Syrkin, supported theSocialist versions ofZionism, while some others, such asLucien Wolf, actively opposed Zionism and promoted anti-nationalist ideas.Isaac Nachman Steinberg, one of the founders of theFreeland League, held anti-authoritarian socialist views, as well as his close friendErich Fromm, who supported Steinberg's territorialist ideas.[citation needed]
While the Jews in general played an important role in the international anarchist movements, many Jewish anarchists actively promotedYiddish language and culture, focused on specifically Jewish issues. While most Jewish anarchists were irreligious or even vehemently anti-religious, some Jewish anarchist and anti-authoritarian thinkers, such asMartin Buber, rabbiYehuda Ashlag,Isaac Nachman Steinberg andGustav Landauer, were religious or religiously inclined and often referred to the Torah, Talmud and other traditional Judaic sources, claiming that anarchist ideas are deeply rooted in the Jewish tradition. The Jewish anarchists believe that in the stateless, free and diverse anarchist society the Jews would have more opportunities to express their individual and cultural autonomy. Many Jewish anarchists, while promoting universalinternationalist values, had actively participated in the development of the Yiddish culture and Jewish community life.[citation needed]
There was some intersection between the Jewish anarchist,Folkist andTerritorialist movements. For example,Isaac Nachman Steinberg, a renowned Territorialist leader, held anarchist views. Most Jewish anarchists supportedanarcho-syndicalism andcommunist anarchism, while a few were individualist anarchists. The small contemporaryanarchist movement in Israel is very active inpeace and Palestinian solidarity actions.[citation needed]
Zionism continues to be the central trans-national political movement of most Jews, although it has split into a variety of branches and philosophies that span the political spectrum from left-wing to right-wing. Jews are also active in government in many of the countries in which they live, as well as in Jewish community organizations that often take political positions.[citation needed]
In the 20th century, Jews in Europe and the Americas traditionally tended towards thepolitical left, and played key roles in the birth of thelabor movement as well associalism. While Diaspora Jews have also been represented in theconservative side of the political spectrum, even politically conservative Jews have tended to supportpluralism more consistently than many other elements of thepolitical right.[citation needed] Daniel J. Elazar connects this pluralist tendency to the fact that Jews are not expected to proselytize, and argues that whereasChristianity andIslam anticipate a single world-state, Judaism does not.[1] This lack of a universalizing religion is combined with the fact that most Jews live as minorities in their countries, and that no central Jewish religious authority has existed for over 2,000 years.(Seelist of Jews in politics, which illustrates the diversity of Jewish political thought and of the roles Jews have played in politics.)
There are also a number of Jewish secular organizations at the local, national, and international levels. These organizations often play an important part in the Jewish community. Most of the largest groups, such asHadassah and theUnited Jewish Communities, have an elected leadership.[citation needed] No one secular group represents the entire Jewish community, and there is often significant internal debate among Jews about the stances these organizations take on affairs dealing with the Jewish community as a whole, such as antisemitism and Israeli policies.[citation needed] In the United States and Canada today, the mainly secularUnited Jewish Communities (UJC), formerly known as theUnited Jewish Appeal (UJA), represents over 150Jewish Federations and 400 independent communities across North America. Every major American city has its local "Jewish Federation", and many have sophisticated community centers and provide services, mainly health care-related. They raise record sums of money forphilanthropic andhumanitarian causes in North America and Israel. Other organizations such as theAnti-Defamation League,American Jewish Congress,American Jewish Committee,American Israel Public Affairs Committee,Zionist Organization of America, Americans for a Safe Israel (AFSI),B'nai B'rith andAgudath Israel represent different segments of the American Jewish community on a variety of issues.[citation needed]
The 21st century has brought changes in the political leanings of Jewish communities in the diaspora. In the U.S. and Canada, the two largest Jewish diaspora communities, voters are shifting from liberal to more conservative leanings. In 2011, an Ipsos Reid exit poll of voters in the federal election of Canada found that 52 per cent of Jewish voters supported the Conservatives, 24 per cent the Liberals and 16 per cent the NDP, reflecting " an enormous shift in voter preference among Canadian Jews." The shift appears to reflect an alignment with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing coalition government and its views on Israel's security.[2] The Jewish community in Great Britain is also leaning conservative in the 21st century as a poll published by the Jewish Chronicle in early 2015 shows. Of British Jews polled, 69% would vote for the Conservative Party, while 22% would vote for the Labour Party. This is in stark contrast to the rest of the voter population, which according to a BBC poll had Conservatives and Labor almost tied at about a third each. Jews have typically been a part of the British middle class, traditional home of the Conservative Party, though the number of Jews in working class communities of London is in decline. The main voting bloc of poorer Jews in Britain now, made up primarily of ultra-Orthodox, votes "en masse" for the Conservatives. Attitudes towardIsrael influence the vote of three out of four of British Jews.[3][4]
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